Various brake assemblies are known in the art to engage and release brakes in a vehicle, such as via a handbrake or footbrake assembly, by controlling a tension applied in one or more brake cables linking the two. For proper operation, brake cables must be adequately tensioned so to impart the desired action on the brakes when engaged, and equally release the brakes when disengaged.
Various devices and tools have been proposed for measuring and/or adjusting the tension in a brake cable, such as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,578,216; 4,373,402; 7,464,508; 6,575,270; 6,814,189; 7,011,188; 5,787,761 and in Canadian Patent Application No. 2,690,547.
While the above provide different examples of cable tensioning tools, these tools can generally suffer from one or more drawbacks. For example, some known techniques may not provide reliable or consistent results, which can lead to undesirable variations in output brake tensions, for example, in the context of an assembly line. Similarly, some techniques may be overly difficult or cumbersome to implement or handle where time and efficiency is of greater importance, again for example, in the context of an assembly line. These and other drawbacks of known solutions will be readily apparent to the person skilled in the art.
Therefore, there remains a need for a brake cable tensioning and calibration system and method that overcome some of the drawbacks of known techniques, or at least, provides the public with a useful alternative.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the invention(s).